I know natural purple itself was difficult to obtain, but why didn’t they just mix red and blue? Were those also rare? Did it just not work?
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It came from a specific sea snail. Nothing else produced anything close to that color. And that snail was relatively rare and pretty hard to harvest. So it was expensive by necessity and the fact that it was expensive made it a status symbol.
The purples they got when they mixed red and blue weren’t as good as the purple they got from the snails.
Tyrian Purple dye historically could only be made by crushing the Murex snail. These snails were fairly rare and it was a disgusting and laborious process.
Since it was rare and expensive purple dye was associated with royalty and wealth.
Ancient people did mix colors and could mix red and blue to make purple, but the mixed dye ran and faded, while the Murex purple was a much richer color.
So using a mixed dye was like wearing fake designer clothing today, you can tell.
Until the 19th century you were dependent on what dyes you could find in nature, and was pretty arbitrary what you could find.
For purple the Murex snail was so rare that it was worth the Carthaginians travelling halfway down the Atlantic coast of Morocco to get hold of it
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essaouira#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essaouira#History)
As for blending, not all dyes are equal, your red and blue might require incompatible methods and take weathering, washing and fading differently.
it is not just a matter of getting the colour you want, but how you apply it, what you can apply it to, how long it lasts, etc etc
Blue could also be very expensive, aquamarine for example was so expensive it is why Mary the Mother of Jesus is often shown wearing that shade.
Crimson came from crushed beetles; saffron from the stamens of a particular flower that also made one of the most expensive spices.
There are cheaper alternatives, but they are not as good
It wasn’t until the 19th century that industrial chemistry made just about any shade you could think of available, including some that didn’t exist before
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauveine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauveine)
In Europe and the Mediterranean, really strong, clear red and blue dyes were hard to create, too. Turkey red is a nice, strong red, but the dyeing process was a closely-guarded secret for a long time. Kermez or crimson (a red pigment made from scale insects, was known, but it’s labor-intensive and expensive to produce (like Tyrian purple!). In Europe, there are plants that will produce red dye (like madder), but it’s not a bright red, and you need a bright red to get a vibrant purple.
Indigo and woad will produce a nice blue that you can use to get green and purple. However, you still have to deal with red – earthy or dull red will produce a muted purple when overdyed with indigo or woad.
After Europeans began colonizing the new world, they had a few more options. Cochineal is a bright, pinkish-red dye made from crushed cactus beetles. It can be overdyed with indigo to produce a good purple. Logwood can produce a purplish color that can be enhanced with cochineal or indigo.
Synthetic dyes weren’t available until the 19th century. Mauve – a purple color – was one of the first commercially successful synthetic dyes, and it was _wildly_ popular.
Edit: Forgot about kermez
Stuff You Should Know has an amazing episode on Indigo that might answer this question. Its been a while since I listened to it, but I remember being fascinated by it.
A big piece missing here is that Tyrian purple does not look purple in the sense you’re likely thinking of it. It’s actually a deep red that’s difficult to achieve without crushing a lot of snails. The point of Tyrian purple is that it’s a unique color. There is a cheaper alternative (kind of a muddy purple color), but it’s not going to have the deep dark red color that is Tyrian purple and it’s not going to fool anyone.
I think what’s being left out of a lot of the answers you’re getting is that dyes and pigments (i.e. paint) work differently. Dyes form a chemical bond with the substrate. Pigments are particles suspended in a medium that impart a particular color. When you mix paint, what you’re actually doing is combining the particles so that when you see the color, you’re seeing a combination of the particles, but under magnification, you see both pigments side by side. For example, if you mix red and yellow, your eye perceives the color as orange, but under magnification you see yellow and red particles next to each other.
Dye chemistry is actually incredibly complex. The way a dye works in regards to textiles is that it forms a chemical bond with the substrate (the textile). Substances like wine/etc. that I see have been suggested in this thread are staining rather than actually forming a chemical bond with the textile’s molecules. Historic dyes are not necessarily 1) compatible with one another and 2) compatible with the same substrates. Pairing the right dye with the right fiber type is part of the difficulty. Mixing historic dyes is technically possible but is not as straight forward as mixing pigments. Modern synthetic dyes, particularly those made for the home consumer, have been chemically formulated to work a bit more like paints. Historic dyes that come from plants, animals, etc. function very differently and often do not mix well at all.
To further complicate matters, the sources of blue and red dyes are different. Blue dye was actually pretty easy to source in the ancient world (I suspect some posters are mixing dyes with pigments; blue pigments were rare and incredibly expensive prior to the 17th century). Woad, which is a yellow flower, produces a nice blue dye. In the ancient world, it was widely traded and cultivated throughout Europe (it originated in the Caucuses). Red dye is much trickier. A true scarlet was a rare color in textiles. In the ancient world, the Kermes beetle was the most common source. Like the Tyrian snails, it took a lot of beetles to create a suitable red. Scarlet/red clothing was a status marker and scarlet in particular is associated with specific holy days and feasts. Madder, which is another flower, produces a nice maroon-y color. It was easily available and can actually be further processed and made in to a pigment for painting (i.e. red lake).
To get the cheap alternative purple I mentioned, you would mix woad with madder . That creates a muddy purple-ish color. It is not a Tyrian purple and would never be confused as such.
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